During the Russian Revolution Prince Dmitri was imprisoned along with his parents and grandmother the Dowager Empress at Dulber, in the Crimea.[1] He escaped the fate of a number of his Romanov cousins who were murdered by the Bolsheviks when he was freed by German troops in 1918. He left Russia on 11 April 1919 abroad the Royal Navy ship HMS Marlborough to attend to Malta were they spent nine months before settling to England.[1][2]

Prince Dmitri had a varied career. In the 1920s he was a stockbroker in Manhattan; for a brief period in the 1930s he managed Coco Chanel's shop at Biarritz. During World War II he was a lieutenant commander in the Royal Naval Reserve. After the war he became secretary of the travelers club in Paris and in the 1950s he was the European sales representative of a whisky firm.

Following the creation of the Romanov Family Association in 1979, Prince Dmitri was chosen as its first president serving until his death a year later in England.